Joseph B. Lindsey

A brilliant student, Joseph Bridego Lindsey earned his 1883 B.S. from the Massachusetts Agricultural College in only three years, going on the earn his Ph.D. in Germany under Bernhard Tollens at Gottingen University after only two years of study in 1891. In between degrees, Lindsey worked at the College with Charles A. Goessmann and then for the L.B. Darling Fertalizer Company in Pawtucket, Mass. After Germany, Lindsey returned to Amherst where he worked at the College’s Experimental Station, conducting research on animal feeds and traveling throughout the state to deliver his discoveries directly to the farmers who could use them. His passion for animal nutrition and farmers led him to fight for the right of researchers to collect samples of cattle feed, a right which became a state law in 1897, thus protecting farmers from adulterated feeds. Lindsey acted as the head of the Chemistry department from 1911 until 1928 and oversaw the creation of Goessmann Chemistry Laboratory in 1921. Lindsey retired from the College in 1932 and died in Amherst on October 27, 1939.

Includes published articles and pamphlets as well as an analysis the water in the campus pond from 1901. Lindsey determined that the water was not safe for human consumption. There is also correspondence from Lindsey’s son about a memorial plaque and portrait of Lindsey, along with several photographs of the former chemist.

Benjamin Smith Lyman, 1902

A native of Northampton, Massachusetts, Benjamin Smith Lyman was a prominent geologist and mining engineer. At the request of the Meiji government in Japan, Lyman helped introduce modern geological surveying and mining techniques during the 1870s and 1880s, and his papers from that period illuminate aspects of late nineteenth century Japan, New England, and Pennsylvania, as well as the fields of geology and mining exploration and engineering. From his earliest financial records kept as a student at Phillips Exeter Academy through the journal notations of his later days in Philadelphia, Lyman’s meticulous record-keeping provides much detail about his life and work. Correspondents include his classmate, Franklin B. Sanborn, a friend of the Concord Transcendentalists and an active social reformer, abolitionist, and editor.

The papers, 1848-1911, have been organized into nine series: correspondence, financial records, writings, survey notebooks, survey maps, photographs, student notes and notebooks, collections, and miscellaneous (total 25 linear feet). A separate Lyman collection includes over 2,000 books in Japanese and Chinese acquired by Lyman, and in Western languages pertaining to Asia.

An authority in the field of low-temperature physics and superconductivity, Ernest A. Lynton was brought to UMass Amherst in 1973 to serve as the first Vice President for Academic Affairs and Commonwealth Professor of Physics. Lynton was charged with diversifying the student body and broadening the curriculum to emphasize social issues. Born in Berlin Germany in 1926, Lynton received a doctorate in physics from Yale in 1951. He served in his administrative post until 1980, when he took a position as Commonwealth Professor at UMass Boston.

Centered largely on Ernest Lynton’s teaching, the collection contains lecture notes and handouts for Physics courses (Physics 107, 171, Concepts in Physics, Thermodynamics, Statistical Physics), a copy of his dissertation Second Sound in He3-He 4 mixtures, and copies of his book on superconductivity in English, German, and French editions.

Bound in marbled paper boards and identified on the spine as “Praelection Chymicae, Vol. 1, G. Martin,” this mid-18th century volume on chemistry includes references to Andreas Marggraf, John Henry Pott, Hermann Boerhaave, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, and [William] Cullen. Although incomplete and not certainly identified as to location, the front pastedown includes a manuscript notation from Lucien M. Rice indicating that the volume “came into my posession at Charleston, S.C. April 18th A.D. 1865,” while a member of the U.S.S. Acacia (in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron), along with a printed bookplate for Lucien M. Royce. Evidence of singeing at the top corners of the book may be connected to its provenance. The volume may represent a student’s notes, with Martin corresponding either to the lecturer or auditor.

Born in Gomel, Russia in 1912, Lazar Mayants earned a PhD in chemistry (1941) from the Karpov Institute for Physical Chemistry and a Doctor of Science in physics and mathematics (1947) at the Lebedev Institute for Physics (FIAN), both in Moscow. With primary research interests in theoretical molecular spectroscopy, applied linear algebra, quantum physics, probability theory and statistics, and the philosophy of science, he began his career as Professor and Chair of the Theoretical and General Physics Departments at Ivanovo, Saratov, and Smolensk Universities in Russia. Mayants came to University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1981 as a visiting professor, becoming an Adjunct in 1987. He taught at UMass for over six years, often forgoing a paycheck as a result of decreased funding in the sciences. He remained in Amherst until his death in November 2002.

The Mayants Papers are comprised of professional correspondence, drafts of articles, personal and financial records, and notes for research and teaching. Mayants’s dissertation from the Lebedev Institute for Physics is also included with the collection.

Manly Miles

A pioneer in scientific agriculture, Manly Miles was born in Homer, N.Y., in 1826. A naturalist by inclination with a strong practical streak, Miles took a degree in medicine at Rush Medical College (1850) and practiced as a physician for eight years. His interests in the natural sciences, however, soon left him to abandon medicine, and after accepting a position with the State Geological Survey in Michigan from 1858-1861, he turned to academia. An early member of the faculty at Michigan State College, and later Illinois State College, he was recruited to the agricultural faculty at Massachusetts Agricultural College by President Paul Chadbourne in 1882. Four years later, however, following Chadbourne’s untimely death, Miles returned to Lansing, Mich., where he remained until his death in 1898. During his career, he was noted for his interests in organic evolution and plant and animal breeding.

The Miles collection contains 8 notebooks containing notes on reading. In addition to a general notebook on scientific matters, the remaining seven are organized by subject: Breeds of animals, Farm buildings, Farm economy, Feeding and animals, Implements, Manures, and Stock breeding.

Tracy M. Sonneborn

The experimental ciliatologist David L. Nanney spent much of his career studying the protozoan Tetrahymena. Under Tracy M. Sonneborn at Indiana University, he completed a dissertation in 1951 on the mating habits of Paramecium, but soon after joining the faculty at the University of Michigan, he turned his attention to Tetrahymena. During his subsequent career in Ann Arbor (1951-1959) and at the University of Illinois (1959-1991), Nanney made a series of fundamental contributions to the cytology, genetics, developmental biology, and evolution of ciliates, influencing the work of other biologists such as Joe Frankel, Janina Kaczanowska, Linda Hufnagel, and Nicola Ricci. Since his retirement in 1991, Nanney has remained in Urbana.

The Nanney Papers include a dense run of professional correspondence with ciliatologists, geneticists, students and colleagues regarding his pioneering research on ciliates and other professional matters. Of particular note is an extensive correspondence with Sonneborn, accompanied by several biographical essays written after Sonneborn’s death, and a large body of correspondence of the controversial reorganization of the biological sciences departments at the University of Illinois in the 1970s. The collection also includes a selection of Nanney’s writings and a handful of photographs.

in 1944, William Nash graduated as valedictorian of Illinois Institute of Technology in civil and mechanical engineering and five years later he received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. Pursuing a career in naval engineering, Nash worked as a research engineer at the Naval Ship Research and Development Center in Washington, D.C. (1949-1954) and as a structural researcher at Bethesda Naval Institute (1953-1957), where he participated in the deepest recorded naval dive and reverse engineering of recovered Soviet submarines off the coast of Norway, the details of which remain classified. After nine years teaching mechanical engineering at the University of Florida, Nash joined the Department of Civil Engineering at UMass in 1967, where he remained until his retirement in 1992. During his career, Nash also served as a consultant for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, Lockheed International, General Electric and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Nash Papers contain correspondence, publications, and research notes documenting William Nash’s varied academic work and teaching as an engineer, along with selected work of his students.

The Northampton State Hospital was opened in 1858 to provide moral therapy to the “insane,” and under the superintendency of Pliny Earle, became one of the best known asylums in New England. Before the turn of the century, however, the Hospital declined, facing the problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate funding. The push for psychiatric deinstitutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a steady reduction of the patient population, the last eleven of whom left Northampton State in 1993.

With the Government Documents staff, SCUA has digitized the annual reports of the Northampton State Hospital from the beginning until the last published report in 1939. The reports appeared annually from 1856 until 1924 and irregularly from then until 1939.

The abundant waterfowl at Oldham Pond, Plymouth County, Mass., has long been a lure for hunters. During the nineteenth century, both hunting and recreational shooting of geese and ducks grew in scope throughout the Commonwealth, with the development of at least two formal hunting camps at Oldham.

The Oldham Camp records contains a detailed tally of waterfowl shot at Oldham Pond, along with an “Ancient history of Oldham Pond” by Otis Foster, 1906, chronicling changes in hunting practices and the advent of blinds and decoys. These records include annual summaries of geese taken at the camp (1876-1895) and summaries of both geese and ducks (1896-1919). More valuable are detailed records of “daily bags,” 1905-1915, providing daily kill totals for each species (primarily ducks). An addendum by Edgar Jocelyn, 1927, provides additional historical detail on the hunting stands at Oldham Pond and changes in methods of attracting ducks. There are, as well, narrative annual summaries of the hunting seasons, 1905-1908 and 1912. Tipped into the front of the volume is a typed letter from the renowned Cope Cod decoy maker A. Elmer Crowell (1852-1951), July 2, 1926, reminiscing about hunting at Wenham Lake and promising to begin work on the decoys.